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Could humanity have entered the space age without relativity theory or quantum physics? (Other non-Newtonian physics would be allowed, it is actually the importance, or lack thereof, of relativity and quantum mechanics for space exploration which I want to highlight here)

With a "space age" I mean things like sending crewed Sputniks to LEO, landing men on the Moon, sending probes to outer planets, putting communication satellites in geostationary orbit, space telescopes in Lagrange points and such stuff which has been done today.

AFAIK a GPS system would have had some (manageble?) errors, and interplanetary trajectories would've been a bit off. But could such little mysteries not have been practically handled with some engineering rule of thumb adjustments as you go?

What would the greatest problems have been for a purely Newtonian space age humanity?

TildalWave
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LocalFluff
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  • A rendez-vous with Mercury would have been less precise, I reckon :) – Deer Hunter Mar 12 '14 at 12:40
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    I don't think the GPRS/GPS errors would actually be manageable — we would, by the definition of your question, no clue of their nature and no way to correct for them accordingly. – gerrit Mar 12 '14 at 13:25
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    This is a counterfactual question; please remember that the first space launcher (R-7) was an ICBM built to carry "The Bomb". No Einstein -> no Leo Szilard -> no bomb -> no need to build large rockets. – Deer Hunter Mar 12 '14 at 13:37
  • @Deer Hunter: Wouldn't Armstrong have been able to manually pilot the landing craft ad hoc anyway, by looking out of the window and handle the joystick? (Second comment:) Well, von Braun did design real rockets without any nukes, and with space flight in mind. And I don't think he used much relativity in his rocket engineering. I think it would even have been dangerous for him to do so in the government he first worked for, because it was "jewish physics". – LocalFluff Mar 12 '14 at 14:12
  • @gerrit: I'd be surprised if the error from not correcting for relativistic effects GPS-Earth would more than half the precision. If ad hoc adjustments were made as the "mystery error" became large enough. GPS would work without relativity, it just wouldn't work as well, right? – LocalFluff Mar 12 '14 at 14:14
  • While it's an interesting question, it's impossible to objectively answer it without resorting to speculation and personal opinions. It also doesn't identify what would constitute an acceptable answer, and allow answerers to substantiate their claims with factual information. The answer could be no, yes, or anything in between (say, yes, you could launch, but you'd soon realize something isn't quite right, and theory of relativity would've been born through observation as a product of space exploration). It simply isn't a good fit for a Q&A website. Perhaps more suitable for our [chat]? – TildalWave Mar 12 '14 at 14:32
  • This question seems entirely answerable using facts. Though it is difficult to answer in the positive, since that would require assessing all aspects of the technology to land people on the Moon, etc., to see if knowledge of relativity and quantum mechanics was required in at least one thing. Answering in the negative might be easy if you could identify one such thing. (By the way, I'm not coming up with one.) – Mark Adler Mar 12 '14 at 15:10
  • @MarkAdler So what you're saying is the question isn't "primarily opinion based" but it is "too broad"? That doesn't really change my assessment that it's not a good fit for us. But we have sufficient high-reputation user base, so if the community disagrees with the close reason, it has the option to reopen the question with votes, or dispute my decision either in our [chat] or by starting a new post in [meta]. I dislike single-handed decisions as much as anyone else, but seeing some support for it in the comments and wanting to prevent open discussion, I had to act. Hopefully correctly. – TildalWave Mar 12 '14 at 15:44
  • Upvoted because it provoked a "Hmmm, I wonder . . ." response. Can it be edited to be less broad/opinion based? – Jerard Puckett Mar 12 '14 at 16:35
  • The "opinion based" part of my question could only relate to the paragraph where I suggest and refute a couple of arguments on the topic, with the purpose to stimulate thought and comments about it. – LocalFluff Mar 12 '14 at 17:01
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    @LocalFluff Please don't raise issues of moderation and site scope in the main site questions. If you can't understand what's the purpose of putting the question on hold, then please refer to our [about], [help] and relevant scope and qualitative requirements threads in our [meta]. No need to call anyone any names either just because you disagree. I've invited anyone that would like to dispute my decision to do that where appropriate. What else would you like? A red carpet? Thank you very much! – TildalWave Mar 12 '14 at 17:11
  • I would like to participate in the alledged "debate" about how my question could be perceived as "opinioned". Thank You Very Much for letting me add a comment to your comment about my question. Ya know what, if you have opinions about my postings, you are free to email or post me directions like "this is not the place for that" and such. I would respect that. But immediate shut downs without any kind of dialogue, that is just aggravating. I don't understand why you do that against your users. Imagine if I suddenly shut you off from access to this community! – LocalFluff Mar 12 '14 at 17:45
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    @LocalFluff First of, there isn't any "immediate shutdown", I put the question on hold so we can address raised issues with it as a community. Second, the place to do that is either by editing the question to meet requirements, vote to reopen, or dispute decision in [chat], here in comments (which you were never disallowed to post, I have no idea what you're alluding to?), or alternatively, for issues of wider application in our [meta]. Lots of this is also already discussed in [about] and [help]. Frankly, if you think you could do this moderation better, I'd be glad to resign. It's... tiring! – TildalWave Mar 12 '14 at 17:51
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    And FWIW, I actually posted my reasoning for my decision before voting to close, I can't help it if you missed it. IMO, it's consistent with guidelines that the whole community is deciding on. For example, some of it is inherent to our Q&A format and is broadly described in [Ask]. More is discussed in, say, How to ask great questions? or many other posts in our [meta]. These are not requirements that I just pull out of the thin air, they're our requirements. This is not a case of itchy fingers, like you seem to suggest. BTW, thanks for that! – TildalWave Mar 12 '14 at 18:00
  • Would the radios even work? In a purely Newtonian world would they know about the Doppler effect? – Loren Pechtel Mar 12 '14 at 18:35
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    For what it's worth, I actually started to answer this question. My first reaction was that it might be too opinion-based, but like Mark Adler I believe it was quantifiable even if it required assessing a large number of fields. That's where I ran into a roadblock. There's no way we could accurately assess all of the requisite fields in the space of this site. We would not be doing the question justice. So I believe this should be closed, if not for being opinion-based, for being too broad. – called2voyage Mar 12 '14 at 20:26
  • @Loren Pechtel: I'm not suggesting an alternative universe with other natural laws. Just that we didn't yet understand them in terms of relativity and QM. I think that the understanding of the Doppler effect predates those discoveries. – LocalFluff Mar 13 '14 at 01:56
  • And concerning "opinion based", I have no opinion about this. I just wonder if it is the one way or the other. I do argue for the "provocative" point of view, the one I've never encountered until it by chance came to my mind. That is how language is used in order to engage a conversation. It is called rhetorics and has historically been the course you take after having completed the mechanical grammar course. – LocalFluff Mar 13 '14 at 02:07
  • Yes @LocalFluff, thanks for the lecture and missing the point. Again! The close vote is actually explained in the nice little yellow box below, see? And in many comments here. Now, could you please at least read our [about] and collect that Informed badge, before you continue suggesting how the whole community here has to adjust to your views of what is considered suitable for the site, not being bothered that the rest of us worked hard on refining that and made every possible attempt to bring that to your attention? We don't consider open discussions suitable for our Q&A, we're not a forum! – TildalWave Mar 13 '14 at 02:33
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    @LocalFluff What I'm saying is that if they build everything using Newtonian mechanics the radios will be out of tune. If they don't have enough ability to cope with this they won't be able to talk. The problem is real--they had to rearrange the Cassini mission because they forgot it when they build the probe and the original mission profile would have meant the data from Huygens would have been lost. – Loren Pechtel Mar 13 '14 at 03:07

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